Author Karen McClintock 'outs' father, who hid gayness his whole life

Karen McClintock nudged her father — and, in turn, her family — out of the closet.

The Upper Arlington native divulges her family's deepest secret in her book "My Father's Closet" in hopes of learning more about her father's double life.

Though gay, Charles McClintock remained married to the author's mother until his death in 1987.

"The project was really so I could get to know my gay father," said McClintock, 63, who lives in southern Oregon but has spent the past month in residence at the Methodist Theological School of Ohio in Delaware. A psychologist, she mainly works with individuals and churches on sexuality issues.

"I was raised with my straight father, but only by putting years of research and stories together was I able to fully know and love and embrace my gay father."

By writing the book — much of which takes place in Columbus, where her parents met at the now-closed North High School — she uncovered family history, including her father's journal from when he was 19. The journal described a sexual encounter he had with a man while courting her mother. She later discovered the obituary of the man with whom Charles McClintock had a romantic relationship with throughout most of his adulthood.

With both of her parents dead for almost three decades (her mother died nine months after her father), McClintock — who has one adult daughter herself — decided to reveal the family secret with an eye toward helping other families.

"It's a story that is not uncommon, but it's not often written about," she said. "The Williams Institute (at the UCLA School of Law) researches sexuality in America, and they estimate that 3 million children and adults were raised by LGBTQ parents, but we don't have a lot of historic data and we definitely don't have a lot of people explaining the inside of that closet."

McClintock, who is scheduled to make two book appearances this week in central Ohio, spoke recently to The Dispatch about "My Father's Closet," released last month by the Ohio State University Press.

Q: How did you discover your father was gay?

A: That's the hardest question of all because when you're raised as a kid in a family with a big sexual secret, you turn off your knowing. You turn down your intuition. I'd look at pictures of war friends my father had, and they'd have their arms draped around each other and I'd say, 'Who is that?' My mother would say, 'You don't want to know that.'

'Coming out' is a process. How or when did he know is just as valuable a question.

Q: Were there any clues?

A: I start to know when I'm nearing the end of my high-school years by how my parents become unhappy together. However, they're still kissing when he comes home and when he leaves, and they still have their Manhattan at 5 o'clock. He starts making gay friends at the university (he worked at Ohio State) — so big clue there. I take off for the West Coast to get a degree in theology. I start pastoring and work with churches during the AIDS epidemic. I date gay men, so do I know?

It's a good question. It took a whole book to know, and it took a lot of clues to know, because you're raised not to know what is right in front of you. There's a lot of gay history in the book, and the more I know about gay history, the more I know my father is gay.

Q: You asked him directly if he was gay, but he "tap-danced like Fred Astaire" around the issue. Why do you think he never came out?

A: For the protection of the family — so they don't divorce, so your dad doesn't lose custody of you, so he doesn't lose his job and you're all in poverty. There was good reason for us not to know and to keep us in the dark.

Q: Did your father's secret lead to your career?

A: I had a comfort in the gay community. I was also in the liberal branch of the church. You don't go to seminary in Berkeley (California) without coming out on the liberal end of Christianity. And, then, we started having so much sexual misconduct in the church. I've always been comfortable and ready to talk about sex throughout my career. Four books on sexuality in the church, and I finally confessed to my writing group that this was the book I had to write next because I had sort of been avoiding the book that really told my own story.

Q: Why did you have to write this?

A: Well, if you read the prologue, it's because Dad showed up as my writing muse.

I've written a lot about how we have to stop shaming people for their sexual orientation. That's what the other books are about. In this one, I got to describe what it really meant to be in a family closet and to inherit shame, and how inheriting shame had some really profoundly difficult outcomes — like the wrong choice in marriage for me (she remarried 10 years ago), the wrong choice in marriage for my sister (her only sibling).

I think I had to get to this time and place in history because I don't want the book to say that being raised by an LGBTQ parent is a problem. It's being raised with a sexual secret that is problematic.

Q: How did writing the book help you?

A: I feel closer with my parents. I feel resolved with them. Someone said to me, 'How lucky you are to have resolved your family issues in your lifetime.' Judith Barrington, a memoir author, said you can't write a memoir until you finish whining.

Q: What impact do you hope your book has?

A: My passion is to let people know that they don't have to keep living in shame and the shame is the barrier.

I handed someone a (book) postcard. She told me, 'I'm the only person who knows that my sister is gay in our family,' and she began crying. A gay man who fathered children in a straight marriage said, 'I've never quite understood how my transition affected my children until I read your book.' One of my computer guys has two moms, and he hasn't known how to talk to them about the secrets they had while he was growing up. If the book helps him, that would be quite a gift.

award@dispatch.com

@AllisonAWard

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